30 years of gaming

I've been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for the bones of a month now. It still blows me away every day. It's unbelievable. Easily the best computer game I've ever played. And I've played a far bit. I'm 39 now so I've got around 30 years of gaming under my belt looks with so many others of my vintage it all started with a humble Spectrum 48K.

My uncle Brendan turned up from London with one in a suitcase. He took great pride in telling us it was hot and to be careful not to burn my fingers. Being 9 or so I assumed it was actually hot and it wasn't til years later before I realised what he meant. The system was set up. The tape player for the game cassettes was attached. The game was Steve Davis Snooker. I was trembling with excitement. The TV went on. The B&W TV. For a snooker game. Yup. We had not thought it through. Every shot was tension packed when you don't know if you're aiming at a red or a brown. But I was hooked. Next up was Attic Attack and Monty On The Run. This was amazing. I was sold. 

The 8 bit & 16 bit gaming era arrived for us at the same time. Our cousins had an Aunt who worked for Sega and they had gotten a Sega Master System, a Game Gear and a Megadrive along with a tonne of games. I was insanely jealous. E-Swat, Altered Beast, Duck Hunt, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker and of course Sonic The Hedgehog. Hours nay days were lost as we navigated the Scrap Yard Zones of Sonic and used Wacko Jacko's moves to decimate wave after wave of bad guys. I spent an awful load of that year plopped down on my cousin's carpet. Then my friend Moloney got a Super Nintendo and I got even more addicted. Super Mario World, Street Fighter 2 and Super Mario Kart. I was absolutely useless at Mario Kart but that didn't stop me loving it. 4 of us, Me, Moloney, Shacky and Snoop playing at once and me always, ALWAYS coming last. I'm still useless at racing games 26 years later. I got a gameboy for Christmas that year too. It was unreal. Now I could play games in the jacks....er.....that sounds dodgy. Tetris was brilliant. So simple but so addictive. That music, the joy of wiping out 4 lines at once. The fact that you could jump in and out for a minute or two instead of settling down for hours. Zelda on the gameboy was a revelation. I'm still amazed how much game was able to fit onto that little cartridge. It became my new favourite game until I let my brother Diarmaid bring it to the Gaeltacht and some jackeen scumbag stole it from him. Bastard.

Up next was our Atari ST. Our parents knew we were mad about games so bought us a proper computer instead of a console in the hopes that we'd use it for schoolwork too. Ha, like that was ever going to happen. The Atari used floppy disks so every game we got from that shop in Dolphin's barn were we got the ST was of course hooky. We left the store with at least 20 games. We were on a high. Stuff like James Pond : Robocod, The Addams Family, Navy Seals, Titus The Fox, Fire & Ice and then true classics like Sensible Soccer, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder and The Chaos Engine and one game, Wizkid, which is still possibly the weirdest thing I've still ever played. Those games and a zipstick joystick. It was nirvana. Those graphics. We thought they'd never be topped.

The 32 bit era of the first Playstation passed me by. I was 16 and never in the house. Starting to dabble with cider and perfecting my french inhale technique with Marlboro lights and more interested in music than anything else. I thought my computer games days were over. Then my brother got a Nintendo 64 and the affair started again. Super Mario 64, still the best platform game ever. Goldeneye, the game that made us all fall in love with first person shooters. Zelda: The Ocarina Of Time. A game so good that 20 years later it's still in my top 5. I think I lost the entire summer of 1997 to that one. My need to find every golden skulltula in it nearly killed me.

College came around and so did big powerful pc's. Big powerful pc's in 1998 meant only one thing. Half-Life. The story of Gordon Freeman and his adventures in Black Mesa. Still one of the most amazing games ever and still influencing games to this day. After Half Life came Project IGI, Soldier Of Fortune and so many others. PC gaming was a pricy adventure though. One a student like me could not afford. I needed another option.

Then the PS2 appeared. It looked spectacular and importantly it was affordable. I was earning my first proper wages and one was purchased along with a James Bond game and This Is Football 2002. I hate football but love videogame football. Yup, im an odd one. This was my golden era of gaming. Falling in love with Grand Theft Auto 3. Sneaking around as the Hitman. Metal Gear Solid 2. Final Fantasy. God Of War. Ratchet and Clank. Resident Evil 4. Timesplitters 2. Tony Hawk. The Prince Of Persia. So many others. Sharing a house with one of my best friend's ever, Mikey. Weekends were a blur of weed and Tiger Woods Golf. The PS2's competitor was the X-Box. We scoffed at the X-Box. Wanted nattin to do with it. Until that day in Smyths I tried Gears Of War. Shit. Now i wanted an X-Box. A few months later my PS2 passed away peacefully at the ripe old age of 6 and one was duly purchased. The games were the same quality but now I had a wireless controller. No more need to sit right in front of the TV burning my eyes out. Brilliant. No more sitting on the ground. Then rumours started abounding that the X-Box was prone to overheating. Ha, I thought, this won't happen to me. 

Of course it did.

I was sickened. 2 dead consoles in the space of a year. I vowed this was it. I'm too old for computer games. I'm thirty now. Time to grow out of it. Time to grow up.

So I went out and bought a Playstation 3.

The PS3 was an immense console. Well it was more of a home entertainment system. You could play games, watch blu-rays and go online. It was an investment. Yes an investment. An investment that could play Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto 4, Modern Warfare, Motorstorm, Guitar Hero, Just Cause 2 and so on. By this stage I knew I was a lost cause. Gaming had me in it's grip. I even tried online gaming for the first time. That lasted 30 minutes. I don't do well with American teens calling me an Irish pussy nonstop. It tends to grate. So online gaming was kicked rapidly to the kerb. The PS3 and me were happy together for another 5 years. Then life started getting in the way as it tends to do. I wanted to travel more. I found a love for exercise for the first ever. Friends were moving on and family members were getting sick and things like that would make you realise how silly gaming was. So for a while I did the bare minimum until the day I just didn't bother anymore.

I missed it though. It was like an old buddy. I'd so many memories of fun times with friends tangled up in it all. It would be a shame to never go back. After a couple of years I got the itch and decided to dip a toe back in with the Playstation 4. No better place to start again. Grand Theft Auto 5 was purchased and that was it. My god, it was like stepping into a movie. I'd never played anything like it. And just like that, I was once again hooked. The Last Of Us. Batman. Tomb Raider. Assassin's Creed. Far Cry:Primal and others. But now I take my time and enjoy the games instead of racing through them to get to the next. These days I'm amazed if I play more than 3 games a year. We've reached the stage where you actually care about the characters in games now and you can stop and just appreciate the beauty of a good game instead of blasting by it all. A game like Red Dead Redemption 2 fits the bill perfectly here. 

There you have it. 30 years of gaming. Here's to 30 more.